The Iranian Times

Monday October 4, 1999 / Mehr 12, 1378, No. 820


Sehaty Foreign Exchange


    Nezami


Cover story

Her eyes
"Her eyes were so black they seemed to drain the room of all its light"

October 4, 1999
The Iranian

Excerpt from James Buchan's A Good Place to Die, published by The Harvill Press, London. This is the first major British novel to engage with contemporary Iranian society for a generation. It is an epic love story that opens in Isfahan in 1974 and closes in the same city twenty-three years, a revolution and a bloody war later.

One afternon, 19 April, 1974, 23 Farvardin 1353, I fell asleep and woke to a shop full of angels. Their voices had the character of light in the dingy shop. I staggered up and saw, leaning against the high doorpost that separated the two rooms, a girl in a black prayer-chador. I thought: She thinks she's too tall, but she's not. Behind her, the bright voices of girls wheeled and swooped like the pigeons in the courtyard of the Shah's Mosque, but the person in the door was still. She had pulled her chador up across her face and where the hem had risen up I saw the edge of a light blue skirt, the uniform of the girls' secondary schools in Isfahan, and white ankle socks. Her eyes when I looked at them were black, so black they seemed to drain the room of all its light: their blackness was not an absence of light, but was itself a light, of a kind I had not up to that moment experienced or known to exist, beneath which the objects of the solar world took on a melancholy futility ... GO TO FEATURE


Outlook

Khamenei tries to defuse clash

By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
October 4, 1999

TEHERAN, Iran -- Iran's supreme religious leader moved decisively on Friday to head off a fresh confrontation with the country's reformist President, instructing hard-line Muslim clerics and their loyalists among the police not to "take matters into their own hands" in a potentially explosive dispute involving university students. Equally stunning, Khamenei gave effusive backing to President Mohammad Khatami ... FULL TEXT


    Anyway

Zoooom through the net
But connection problems raise reliability issue

Just this weekend I finally got a high-speed connection to the Internet. With the Roadrunner service via the home cable outlet I can now send and receive data at up to one million bits of information per second (instead of 56,000 bits per second I was getting with my standard 56k modem).

What does that mean? That means I can download an 11 megabyte file in just over a minute, watch QuickTime or listen to RealPlayer files almost instantly and upoload files many times faster. The service only costs $49 per month ($79 installation fee, including moden).

Downside: My connection has gone off and on several times since the installation on Saturday. In fact the The Iranian Times was late today becayse of this and I had no time to gather sports or arts news. The technicians came over today (after I begged the local supervisor) and said it was fixed. But it went down again. Therefore I am worried about reliability. I might have had a slow connection before, but it was better than no connection at all ... MORE INFO


More Letters

* Baseh digeh

Ali Fathi-Rad writes: As if it is not bad enough hearing people put down your culture and ethnicity all day long on the CNN, BBC, CBS, NBC; as if it is not enough to see Diane Sawyer willfully try to misrepresent the facts and portray the Middle Easterners as a bunch of wife beating savages; as if movies like Not Without My Daughter are not enough; as if the whole of Western propaganda machinery is not geared towards demonizing the Middle East, and Iran in particular; I have to bear these stabs in the back from the likes of Laleh Khalili ["To live or to be alive"] and this taazeh beh doraan resideh Saghie Zarinkalk ["Khodeti"] ...

For you, Laleh Khalili, Iran has become something which you abuse to gain self esteem. And interestingly enough, this is quite obvious from your tone: "I am something else, perhaps unbecomingly unfeminine, dangerous perhaps, unknowingly so". How you make me laugh. Romanticizing that you are different from these barbarians, a "dangerous" revolutionary to their backward ways. A female Che Guevara, are you? Yes, you ARE "something else". Good for you. It takes no genius to point out Iran's social ills, or those of the Third World, for that matter... FULL TEXT

* Sayonara, my lazy nation

Saeed Derhami writes: I enjoyed reading ["Persian work ethics"]. To be honest I think as a nation we are sick to our stomach. The very few symptoms that you have mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg.

There are tens of other civilizations and nations that have been forced off the stage of history to make room for more deserving ones. I'm not talking about marhoom-e USSR. But look at today's Russia! My prediction for Iran as a nation-state is this: DOOOOOOOM...!!! I hope I'll be proven wrong in the near future but as you follow current world trends and Iran's awful and stupid current regime there seems to be NO way out of our eternal misery.

By all accounts, Iran has failed many tests in modernization in nearly 200 years. It's time to say: " SAYONARA my LAZY NATION ...!" You did not deserve the chances of institutional evolution; you are not selected to be a symbol of anything but backwardness ... FULL TEXT


* Bookreading: * Stories of old Iran, in Portland

Seven Shades of Memory, Stories of old Iran: Terence O'Donnell lived in Iran from 1957-71 operating a farm from 1963-70 before returning to America, where he wrote "Garden of the Brave in War", a memoir praised by critics as "a gem" and "a literary classic on a level with Out of Africa." "Seven Shades of Memory" is his first collection of short stories. These stories show his prescient understanding of the multifaceted nuances of Persian culture and the Westerners who attempt to navigate through it. Book reading by Terence O'Donnell will be held at 7:30PM Wednesday, October 13th, 1999, Smith Memorial Center - Room 333, Portland State University. Info (503) 725 8566.


Books of the Week

* Nastaran-haaye surati (1998)
Novel
By Reza Julaie

* Sharq-e banafsheh (1998)
Novel
By Shahriar Mandani-pour

* Del daadeh-gi (1998)
Novel in two volumes
By Shahriar Mandani-pour

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Get two of the best-selling videos (total of 22 hours of entertainment) for a combined price of just $99 and save $51. PLUS you will get two free CDs (Googoosh & Moin) with your order!

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More news

Play Prompts Arrests in Middle East

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Two more suspects have been detained in connection with a satirical play deemed insulting to Islam, Iran's Intelligence Ministry said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The ministry did not say in its report, which was carried by IRNA late Sunday, when the suspects were arrested or whether they had been detained with the co-editors of the play on Sept. 24 ... FULL TEXT

Nateq-Nuri echoes Khamenei's call for end to faction fighting

TEHRAN, Oct 3 (AFP) - Iran's conservative leader, parliament speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, Sunday echoed calls by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for an end to the increasingly bitter faction fighting with reformers. "Just as the leader said, the country needs unity in what it says and what it does," Nateq-Nuri told Iran's conservative dominated parliament ... FULL TEXT

Leading liberal editor summoned to Iranian court

TEHRAN, Oct 3 (Reuters) - A leading pro-reform editor was summoned to Iran's press court on Sunday in connection with an earlier case that saw his newspaper, Neshat, banned for insulting Islam, a newspaper colleague said. Mashallah Shamsolvaezin's court appearance comes a day after he and a colleague appealed to reformist President Mohammad Khatami to break his silence on the mounting pressures against the pro-reform press ... FULL TEXT

Editors ask Khatami to defend the press

TEHRAN, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Two leading Iranian journalists appealed to reformist President Mohammad Khatami on Saturday to break his silence on the mounting pressures against his allies in the press. In an open letter to the president, Hamid Reza Jalaiepour and Mashallah Shamsolvaezin asked Khatami -- who has fostered Iran's independent press in his campaign for a civil society -- to shield them from their powerful critics ... FULL TEXT

Iran says no date set for Khatami visit to France

TEHRAN, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Iran said on Monday that no date had been set for a planned visit to France by Iran's reformist President Mohammad Khatami, Iranian radio reported. Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said the two countries were discussing the timing of the visit. Banking sources in Paris said last Thursday that the visit was due to take place on October 26-27 in principle, though no definite date was given ... FULL TEXT

Lawmakers seek Iran disclosure

October 4, 1999 (USA TODAY) -- A congressional committee has asked for "full disclosure" of U.S. contacts with Iran, expressing concern that Congress is being kept in the dark about overtures toward a strategic country and longtime adversary. Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, sent a letter late Friday to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. USA TODAY obtained a copy Sunday ... FULL TEXT

Iran rebuffs U.S. over Saudi bombing case

TEHRAN, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Iran has rebuffed a request from U.S. President Bill Clinton to help solve the 1996 bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen, saying it was an internal matter for the Saudi authorities ... FULL TEXT

Iran denies plans to use force to free Portuguese hostages

TEHRAN, Oct 4 (AFP) - Iran's interior ministry on Monday denied reports it planned to use force to free three Portuguese nationals kidnapped a week ago as efforts to secure their release remain shrouded in uncertainty. "The interior ministry vehemently denies such reports," spokesman Abolreza Bandi said, after Sunday's Tehran Times quoted a ministry official saying Iran would resort to force to free the hostages ... FULL TEXT

Oman denies mediating between Iran, U.S.

DUBAI, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Oman's foreign minister said in an interview on Monday the Gulf Arab state was not mediating between arch foes Iran and the United States and denied a press report that it had carried a letter between the two capitals. Foreign Affairs Minister Youssef bin Alawi bin Abdullah told the London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper that Oman did not carry a letter from President Bill Clinton to Iran's President Mohammad Khatai ... FULL TEXT

Khatami opens Tehran's biggest international trade fair since revolution

TEHRAN, Oct 2 (AFP) - President Mohammad Khatami on Saturday opened Iran's biggest international trade fair since the 1979 Islamic revolution, paying particular attention to the stand of its largest European trade partner Germany with whom ties have been strained recently. Crowds of people gathered around the president, greeting and applauding him. More than 72 countries, 1,466 Iranian companies and 785 foreign firms are due to take part in the fair, including Iranians representing two US drug companies ... FULL TEXT

NO SPORTS OR ARTS NEWS BECAUSE OF CONNECTION PROBLEM.


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CinemaIran.COM

Boy what a wonderful site. Full of useful, organized information on Iranian films. Just needs some photos and film clips. Dast-e veb-master dard nakoneh :-)

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The Life and Death of the Berlin Wall

Ever notice how the passing of various pop and cultural icons can make you feel old or nostalgic? Well, here's an important landmark of bygone times: the Berlin Wall.

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Quote Unquote

As if

As if it is not bad enough hearing people put down your culture and ethnicity all day long on the CNN, BBC, CBS, NBC; as if it is not enough to see Diane Sawyer willfully try to misrepresent the facts and portray the Middle Easterners as a bunch of wife beating savages; as if movies like Not Without My Daughter are not enough; as if the whole of Western propaganda machinery is not geared towards demonizing the Middle East, and Iran in particular; I have to bear these stabs in the back from the likes of Laleh Khalili...

-- Ali Fathi-Rad
Letter to The Iranian
October 4, 1999

Sayonara

By all accounts, Iran has failed many tests in modernization in nearly 200 years. It's time to say: " SAYONARA my LAZY NATION ...!"

-- Saeed Derhami
Letter to The Iranian
October 4, 1999


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